Episode 40: Grognak for President 2280

Kyle is sick and doesn’t talk much here, so that’s good. As for the bad, Kyle does talk some. Also, Rob made a joke that wasn’t funny and in a rare display of empathy, made him feel bad almost as soon as he told it.

The joke was in reference to Kripsy and this week’s guest going on a “date” to the movies. So, let’s talk about the time I (Rob) realized I was dating a guy.

At the time I had just gotten a good job doing some technical writing. I was making an unbelievable $30k a year, which was a fortune compared to what I was making before at a Little Caesar’s. I want to say I was making about $5.15 an hour there. My best friend, Brian, was still working at that Little Caesar’s. To put that in some perspective, I was single (had a girlfriend, but not married), no real bills and my rent was $300 a month, so $30k a year left me with more money than I knew what to do with.

Brian and I were in a band together and he insisted that on Monday’s we stop practice so he could watch wrestling. Since there wasn’t anything else to do, I started watching it too, for the first time since I was in junior high. So, when wrestling came to St Louis, I wanted to go. I had the money to finally get seats that weren’t in the last two rows of the upper upper balcony, but those tickets were a bit pricey for Brian. But since I didn’t want to go alone and knew I’d have more fun if he was there anyway, buying a ticket for him was a no-brainer. Because really, I was doing it more for my enjoyment than his, right?

And that’s how things went. If I wanted to do something but Brian couldn’t afford it I never thought twice about paying for it. He never took advantage of the situation and being able to do fun shit with my best friend was more important than the money to me. So we’d go to movies, concerts, dinner, whatever. Sometimes we’d pay our own way, sometimes I’d pay and if he had some extra cash, Brian would pay.

Then one day we were talking and one of us made a joke about we’d been hanging out every day for the last month or so. Like, he’d been over at my place every night basically from the time we were both off work until midnight or later, when I’d drive him home because he didn’t drive.

And that’s when it dawned on both of us, we were basically dating. Not that there was any romantic intentions on either side, but if one of us had been a female and doing everything else exactly the same, it would totally have been dating. And that is how I was dating a guy and didn’t even know it.